On the DVD

This month we bring you two great desktop distributions: Mageia 3, from the all-volunteer community that forked the commercial Mandriva Linux distribution, and Linux Mint Debian, a semi-rolling distribution based on Debian Testing.

Mageia 3 and Linux Mint Debian Edition

This month we bring you two great desktop distributions: Mageia 3, from the all-volunteer community that forked the commercial Mandriva Linux distribution, and Linux Mint Debian, a semi-rolling distribution based on Debian Testing.

Mageia [1][2] improvements in this latest version include new support for recent hardware, a choice to install non-free firmware and drivers during the installation process, support for installation on Xen paravirtualized disks and Btrfs filesystems, an upgrade to the package management system, security upgrades, and numerous tool bug fixes [3]. Mageia now has experimental UEFI boot support [4].

Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) [5] combines the power and elegance of Linux Mint, the fourth most widely used home operating system, and the security and stability of Debian. LMDE now comes with a new custom installer and device driver manager to ease the installation process. LMDE does not support EFI, GPT, or secure boot [6][7].

Mageia Linux is a multi-purpose distro based on the Mandriva codebase. A group of former Mandriva engineers started the Mageia project in 2010 as a means to ensure continuing support for the Mandriva community through a non-profit organization free of corporate control.

With this month’s Linux Magazine DVD, you can test Mageia 1, the first release of a Mandriva fork begun in 2010. With a choice of desktops, such as KDE SC 4.6.3, Gnome 2.32, Xfce 4.8.1, and LXDE, you can tailor Mageia’s look and functionality to suit your needs.